


sweet music playing in the dark

by QueenWithABeeThrone



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Music, Established Relationship, M/M, Musicians, eddie's even more embarrassing college band, richie's embarrassing tattoo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:26:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27818248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/pseuds/QueenWithABeeThrone
Summary: “When did you get a tattoo?” Eddie asks. “Wait, hold on, is this—Rich? Is this my lyric?”Richie puts his face in the pillow. Oh, god. “I’m the fucking groupie,” he says, in tones of horrified realization.or: Eddie used to be in a college band called Gazebo Effect. Richie used to be their biggest fan. twenty-seven years later, Eddie finds his way back to music again, with Richie behind him the whole way.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, background Canon Relationships - Relationship, background bill/mike/audra
Comments: 43
Kudos: 88





	1. make up your tunes for love

**Author's Note:**

> fic title is from Hozier's "Almost (Sweet Music)". first chapter title is from Joni Mitchell's "For the Roses".

Richie discovered Gazebo Effect in college.

 _Discovered_ is a pretty good word for it, anyway. Gazebo Effect was a _very_ underground indie rock band, made up of broke-ass college students like Richie himself, and he knew only two people in the entirety of UCLA who even knew the band existed: himself, and the casual hook-up who’d had one of the band’s albums playing on his boombox while Richie blew him on a mattress he’d fished out of the dumpster. Halfway through, he’d pulled off and asked, “Okay, this is going to bug me for all of fucking time if I don’t ask. What’s that playing?”

“Oh, that’s Gazebo Effect,” said the hook-up, whose name was either Gary or Larry or Barry, Richie didn’t really care. He had a dick, he was willing and horny, and Richie would never fucking see him again, god willing. “They’re fucking amazing, right?” And he tugged on Richie’s hair, a signal that he was impatient to get back to their proceedings.

The next day, Richie went looking for Gazebo Effect’s albums. It took him three whole hours, but he managed to score the two albums they had released so far (and some weed) and took them back to his crap-ass dorm room.

Halfway through the first one, Richie was having what was either a weed-induced mental break, or an actual religious experience. Probably the former, but Richie felt like it was the latter. It was like the heavens themselves had opened up, and angels had descended into Richie’s dingy dorm room to explain, in musical tones, the wonders of the universe through the lead singer crooning _what are you running from, where are you running to, and what if I ask you, can you take me with you?_

Gazebo Effect very quickly became Richie’s own little secret. Maybe that was kinda dumb, because logically he wasn’t the only one who knew they existed, but they were so obscure that it _felt_ like it. And he liked it that way. Their songs _spoke_ to him, as though the singer had written them just for him, his name underneath every _sweetheart_ and _baby_ and _darling_ , and Richie could not bear to tell other people and risk them having that same experience and ruining his. Which, again: kinda dumb, but there you go.

The band lasted only two more years after Richie graduated from UCLA (top marks, Dean’s List, bachelor’s degree in Critical Studies from the School of Theater, Film and Television). They signed on with a record label, had an album suddenly become far more popular than anyone ever thought they could be, and then disbanded. Collapsed in on itself under the weight of fame and fortune. Richie cried when he got the news, curled up on his shitty little bed and listened to his tapes in a depressed fog.

He moved on, of course. Bands broke up all the time. But he kept the tapes, transferring them over into a digital medium as time went on.

And maybe he got a tattoo. Maybe it was on his lower back, this string of curly letters that read, _what if I ask you, can you take me with you?_ Maybe sometimes Richie hummed the songs under his breath, and thought about the lead singer, whatsisname, Eddie, and how familiar his voice sounded, how beautiful. What was he doing now? Had he found what he was running toward, had he gotten away from what he was running from? Richie hoped so, even if the idea of it broke his heart.

Then Mike called.

Then he met back up with Eddie again, and that same voice came right out, and Richie’s brain crashed as his auditory processing nerves connected Eddie Kaspbrak’s voice to the sultry, smoky voice of Gazebo Effect’s Eddie and said, _hey, idiot, of course you fell in love with the band, Eddie was the one singing._

He didn’t have a whole lot of time to really process that, though. There was, after all, a sewer clown to kill.

\--

A month after Richie’s tender love confession, and two days after Eddie’s finally let out of the hospital, they’re making out in bed when Eddie tugs at the hem of Richie’s shirt and says, “God-fucking-dammit why do you have to wear fucking _button-ups?_ ”

“It’s _Dawn of the Dead_ , why wouldn’t I?” Richie says, laughing, but he unbuttons his shirt and lets Eddie pull it off him, tipping his head back with a whine as Eddie trails kisses down his body.

“Turn over,” Eddie says. Richie turns over.

Then Eddie says, “What the _fuck._ ”

“What?”

“When did you get a tattoo?” Eddie asks. “Wait, hold on, is this—Rich? Is this _my_ lyric?”

Richie puts his face in the pillow. Oh, god. “I’m the fucking groupie,” he says, in tones of horrified realization.

“You’re _what?_ ”

Richie turns back over again, says, “Okay, just—don’t freak out, but I. Uh. I really liked your band back in college? Gazebo Effect?” He winces. That was not a question, Eddie damn well knows his own band name. “It was a _really_ rough week,” he says, “and the song came in at exactly the right time.” Which was mid-blowjob, but he’s not going to say that out loud. “I didn’t know it was _you,_ ” he says, a little pathetically.

Eddie’s face is beet-red. “I wrote so many other songs and you picked _that_ one to have on your body forever?” he asks.

“I was a little repressed weirdo!” Richie says, defensively. “Anyway, you’re the one who followed my entire fucking career long enough to know I didn’t write my own jokes!”

“I didn’t _follow your entire career_ , I just watched your specials from 2003 onward,” huffs Eddie. “Jesus Christ. I never thought that song got anywhere outside of New York, it wasn’t on the album that hit it big.”

Richie coughs. “Yeah,” he says, “uh, I bought all your albums. And your EPs. And that stupid fucking single—”

Eddie groans. “Don’t mention the fucking single to me,” he says, “ _please_. I didn’t write that, Lucien did, and it was just a total fucking shitshow start to finish.” Then he pauses, and rests his hand on Richie’s side. There’s a tan line around his ring finger, where the wedding ring used to be. “You listened to them all?” he asks, quietly.

“I did and I fucking loved them,” Richie says. He leans up on his elbows, says, “And I’ve always wanted to ask: take me with you?”

Eddie laughs, a little, and then leans in. “Yes,” he breathes, and kisses him.

\--

Eddie moves to LA after his last Christmas in New York, most of which Richie also spent in New York, bitching about the cold to make Eddie laugh and tease him for losing what little tolerance he built up living in Maine. Soon enough Eddie’s the one bitching about the heat in LA, while Richie laughs and teases him for being too used to New York winters.

The thing is, because LA’s pretty hot sometimes, Richie occasionally likes to take his shirt off and just hang out in his giant house without a shirt. It’s fine, he’s single, and the paparazzi aren’t as interested in Richie’s shirtless pictures as they would be in Chris Evans’. Or, well, he _was_ single, anyway, because one day he walks into the living room sans shirt, reading lines off this script he got for a guest role on _Brooklyn Nine-Nine_ , and Eddie, on the couch, says, “Jesus _Christ._ ”

Richie looks up. Eddie is staring at him with eyes wide as dinner plates, apparently fixated on his lower back. “Like what you see?” he says, preening.

“Fuck, yeah,” says Eddie. He puts his book aside as Richie comes over to flop down on the couch beside him, arranging himself so Richie can lay his head on his lap. “I was _reading_ , you know,” he says.

“So keep reading,” says Richie, pulling his phone out of his pants. “I’ll just check my e-mails.”

“Your e-mails are probably way more interesting than Misery trying to get into some guy’s pants,” says Eddie. “I was really hoping to finish this chapter.”

“You don’t have to if you’re so bored,” Richie points out.

“I didn’t say I didn’t like Misery,” Eddie says, fingers sinking into Richie’s hair, his blunt nails scratching lightly over his scalp. It tingles very nicely. “Anyway, I hear it gets fucking wild in the newest book. Something about bees, amnesia and Africa.”

“Really?” Richie asks, surprised. “I thought the guy ended it already.”

“Apparently not,” says Eddie, with a shrug.

“Must’ve offered him a shitton of money,” Richie says, because that’s usually how these things go, loud fan campaigns aside. He puts his script aside and pulls his phone out of his pants pocket, tapping on his e-mail app. Junk, spam, junk, Lauren’s found him something new, junk, invite to Audra and Mike’s house to keep them company while Bill’s away on his book tour, invite to a comedian friend’s divorce party, Ali’s comments on the bit he sent her three days ago, new alerts for Gazebo Effect, Lana and Frank are having a baby shower—

“Wait,” says Richie out loud, backing up a step. “What?”

“What?” Eddie asks, as Richie opens the alert for Gazebo Effect. He’d set it up years ago, but he barely ever gets pinged for it—the band’s just that obscure. When he reads the alert, his hackles rise, and he sits up to look at his very confused boyfriend.

“Did you know your other guitarist just called you the worst band he ever played in?” Richie says, thrusting his phone at him. “What the _fuck_?”

If Eddie rolls his eyes any harder, he might sprain his eye muscles. He groans, then taps on the link. “Oh, fucking _Harold Lauder_ ,” he says. “He was so much worse than Lucien when we were playing together. Or Molly, I guess his name is now.” He scrolls down the screen, his eyebrows crawling up and up in incredulity. “That rat _bastard_ ,” he hisses.

“What else did he say?” Richie demands.

“He said we broke up ‘cause of me!” Eddie says, flinging a hand up like he can’t believe the audacity of this man. “Like _I’m_ the one who forced us into that stupid contract in the first place! I just wanted to write music, _he_ wanted to outsell his ex’s new band!”

“That motherfucker,” says Richie.

“Yeah, I bet he’s still bitter about Frannie,” Eddie grumbles, handing the phone back to Richie. “He was always so hung up on her. He pretended like he wasn’t but I could _tell_.” He collapses against Richie’s side and says, “Yeah, so I wasn’t the best frontman ever, but the band breaking up was a fucking team effort.” He sighs. “I think the only one really trying at the end of it was Ilse. Even our manager Robin was about ready to throw in the towel, we were just a slow motion trainwreck.”

“Good title for a song,” Richie comments, lying back down on Eddie’s lap.

Eddie leans against the couch. From here, Richie’s got a pretty good vantage point of his chin and his nostrils, and notes the way Eddie’s chin tips back, his lower lip jutting out like he’s thinking something over.

“Might be,” Eddie says. There’s a weirdness to his tone that Richie will only realize later means he’s seriously considering the idea. By then, it’ll be a little too late.

\--

The first sign Richie has that something is up is when Eddie goes out one day for a job interview and comes back an hour later than usual with an acoustic guitar. He sits down on the couch and gives it a test strum, winces at the sound, then starts turning the knobs, plucking the string until he’s satisfied with the sound.

Richie sits down next to him, says, “How long has it been since you last picked up a guitar, anyway?”

Eddie shrugs. “Since the band broke up,” he says. “I—went right into risk analysis afterward. Figured I’d gotten it out of my system.” He plucks a couple of stumbling chords, then stops, huffs out a small laugh, and relaxes his shoulders. Strums them again, smoother this time. “You never forget,” he says.

“Hey,” says Richie. “Do ‘Smoke on the Water’.”

“I don’t take requests,” says Eddie, primly, and plucks out the Imperial March from _Star Wars_ to drive his point home.

That’s weird enough, but the second sign is when Eddie comes back home with a notebook and a pencil and starts scribbling in it. Richie, being a fellow creative who’s absolutely terrified of showing his work to people before he thinks it’s ready, tries very hard to be understanding and sympathetic and not be a nosy little bitch. Richie, also being a little shit whose reason for existence is to bug his best friends until they murder him, fails entirely at it and keeps peeking over Eddie’s shoulder when he sees him writing.

Not that it works for more than a second, because Eddie snaps his notebook shut and huffs, “I can feel you _fucking breathing on me_ , Richie.”

“Feel this,” says Richie, and exhales right in his ear. Eddie’s answering yelp is worth the wrestling match they get into immediately afterwards.

“What’re you doing, anyway?” Richie asks, once they’re both exhausted on the floor, notebook and pencil lying off to the side. Eddie’s hand is firmly holding his, and there’s no chance he’ll let go any time soon. Which is fine. This is exactly where Richie wants to be.

“Just—writing,” says Eddie. “It’s a surprise.”

“Can’t I get a peek?” Richie wheedles.

“Nope,” says Eddie, unmerciful.

“I’ll give you a blowjob,” Richie tries.

“I get those for free already,” says Eddie. “This is private stuff for now, all right? I’ll show you sooner or later, but I just—I can’t show you now. It’ll ruin it.” And he sounds so serious about it that Richie believes him, and agrees.

The third sign is the guitar-playing. Eddie doesn’t play all the time, and at first they’re mostly just covers as he’s easing back into playing after years away, but a month in, Richie starts to hear new melodies. And they’re new melodies, all right, stuttering and stopping over again with slight variations, as if Eddie’s testing how they sound in the air.

They’re a siren song for Richie, who comes over and stands in the doorway just listening to the music. He thinks he has a picture of what’s going on here, now. He’s pretty sure, anyway.

Eddie seems just fine with him viewing this, with him listening to this. Eddie actually seems to be doing a lot better now that he’s got a guitar and his notebook and he’s (most likely) writing songs again. Richie kind of likes this—likes that he gets this all to himself, for a little while. It reminds him of when he first discovered Gazebo Effect, when he first heard Eddie’s voice sing _but goddammit I’m so sick of sleeping alone, don’t you understand I will always be yours?_ and some part of his heart sat up and said _him, we know him, he’s singing this for us._

“How about throwing in a key change in there?” he suggests once, lying on the couch while Eddie’s muddling through a bridge. “Major to minor. Really drive the message home.”

“I haven’t even figured out the fuckin’ message yet,” says Eddie. “What the fuck would I do with a key change? Maybe this isn’t the kind of song that needs a key change.”

“How would you know?” Richie asks.

“I just do,” says Eddie. “Hey, why don’t you add another mom joke to your routine? Really drive the message home.”

Richie grins beatifically at Eddie, and says, “You know what, the world could always use more jokes about your mother’s wet-ass pussy, I’ll get right on that,” and cackles even as Eddie tries to jam a throw pillow onto his face.

So Eddie’s writing music again, and Richie figures he’ll probably do something like release them on Bandcamp or Soundcloud. The normal thing to do for indie singers these days, y’know.

He’s not exactly expecting Eddie to corner him in the kitchen and say, in a rapid burst, “I need to show you what I’ve been working on because once I’m done with the final drafts I’m going to send them off to Molly, Alex and Ilse and I need someone else who isn’t me to listen to the first ones before I start editing them so I don’t convince myself this is all a terrible fucking _mistake_.”

“Uh,” says Richie, who hasn’t been fed coffee yet and therefore is not completely awake enough to parse words just yet. But Eddie sounds distressed and is staring at him with intensely pleading eyes, so he says, “Just lemme get some coffee in me first.”

“Oh, shit, right,” says Eddie, backing off.

So Richie gets his coffee, sits down with Eddie, and listens to the first drafts of four songs.

After the first one, he turns to Eddie and says, “Did you just turn our horror-movie near-death kids-dying-terribly trauma into a love song?”

“Bill turned it into three different books!” Eddie says, throwing his hands up in the air. “Mine is _one_ fucking song about clowns in the basement!” He lets his hands drop, pinches the bridge of his nose. “Jesus,” he grumbles, “what else am I gonna do with it, huh?”

“Hey,” says Richie, taking his hand, “I didn’t say I didn’t like it.” He squeezes his hand. “Anyway, I did ten minutes about growing up with a serial killer for a classmate last week, so it’s not like you’re the only one in this household cheapening his trauma.”

“Fucking excuse you,” says Eddie, “ _my_ trauma is going to cost fifteen dollars an EP on Bandcamp.”

“Highway fuckin’ robbery,” says Richie, and plays the next song. “Oh my god, Audra’s gonna kill you for putting her and Bill and Mike and their weird mating dance on blast.”

“What mating dance?” Eddie asks, with all the baby duck-like innocence of a man who absolutely knows exactly what he’s done. From the tinny speakers, his voice sings, _My love for you is a fucked-up game show, I thought I’m yours but your friend said hello, I don’t know who the hell I’m fighting for, I’m so sorry but I keep wanting more._

“They’re gonna kick your ass,” Richie says.

\--

Audra does not come over to kick Eddie’s ass up and down Hollywood Boulevard after Eddie sends the Losers the second drafts, which, thank god, Richie likes Eddie’s ass very much. She does, however, call to say, “We’re _figuring our shit out_.”

“Hi, Audra, how did you like the song,” says Eddie, dryly. He’s hunched over his notebook with his guitar cradled in hand, striking out phrases and trimming the verses. He’s doing this in a tank top, because it’s fucking hot, and Richie is shamelessly ogling his arm muscles from his vantage point on the floor. “Really? So nice to hear that.”

“You dickcheese,” says Audra. “We’re not _that_ bad.”

“Have you touched Mike’s dick yet?” Richie asks. “Has Mike touched _Bill’s_ dick yet? Have orgasms happened yet?”

“Fuck you, Richie,” says Audra, which Richie takes to mean, no, they are still in their weird little mating dance. It’s a little ridiculous how much pining three people can contain between them. “Eddie, other than the fact that you’re apparently out here putting me on blast—”

“I included _no_ identifying details,” says Eddie.

“ _Putting me on blast_ ,” says Audra very loudly, “I liked the songs. They were very catchy.”

“That’s it?” Eddie asks.

“I’m sorry, did you want an expert opinion?” Audra says. “I’m an actress, Bill is a writer, Mike’s running a culinary blog. Not one of us knows anything about music.”

“You were in _Les Miserables_ back in 2012,” says Eddie, somehow nailing the French title in a way Richie has never even fucking bothered to try. Easier to just say _Lay Miz_ and not put his poor tongue through the hell of French, the language where nothing sounds the way it fucking should. “You sang in it! You ought to know music!”

“That was a musical anyone could watch on YouTube!” Audra exclaims, and Richie imagines her tossing her hands in the air while she does—whatever it is she’s doing when she’s not doing award-winning actress stuff, he’s not sure. “All I had to do was pull up Lovely Ladies and memorize the words and channel a white version of Lea Salonga while Anne Hathaway did her thing!”

“But _pitching_ —”

“I was in an ensemble cast, I sang in the same pitch everybody else was singing!”

Richie, whose own musical knowledge beyond appreciating the arts starts and ends with _Eddie writes really good songs that speak to the little thirteen-year-old repressed gay inside me_ , tunes out the rest of the argument and pulls up Candy Crush on his phone. He likes Candy Crush. His brain shuts up and concentrates entirely on matching the candies and achieving a set goal, and if he loses, no skin off his nose, he can just keep paying for extra tries. He fucking loves being rich.

He tunes back in again when he hears, on the periphery of his consciousness, the strum of guitar strings. “ _I want the fire back, I want the fire back, want the nails down my back,_ ” Eddie sings quietly, his voice a growl, then pauses and shakes his head. “Rake your nails down my back,” he mumbles to himself, then bends over his notebook and scratches the original line out.

Richie shivers, a little. He’s always kind of thought of Gazebo Effect’s songs as _his_ , and now Eddie is writing new songs and three of the now seven or eight songs he’s let Richie listen to so far are—three of them _are_ about him. And their relationship. And the feelings Eddie has about it all, gooey mushy feelings paired with overwhelming lust and need. It’s a little terrifying considering Richie’s feelings about being a Huge Gay were, a year ago, limited to complete and utter terror and refusal to talk to almost anyone about it.

And now Eddie is writing songs about it. Eddie, _his_ Eddie, and Eddie of Gazebo Effect— _he’s_ writing songs about Richie. About kissing Richie. About sex with Richie that he likens to fireworks and celebrations and birthday cakes and good shit like that.

He is living the groupie’s wet fucking dream right here. The lead singer of his favorite band ever sucks his dick on a regular basis and writes _songs_ about him.

Richie’s gonna have a good cry about it just as soon as Eddie’s arms stop looking so damn good.


	2. your heart's still beating and i want it all

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from COIN's "I Want It All".

The thing about living with Eddie now that he’s picked music back up is that all of a sudden, Richie’s house starts to ring with music of all kinds. It isn’t just Gazebo Effect, either—one evening he gets in, a little bruised up from having Melissa Fumero kick his ass up and down a fake New York street, and Eddie’s listening to some guy singing, _Twenty-seven years to find you, but that’d be twenty-seven wasted years if we don’t see this through, like songbirds in the city air I’m not gonna make it._

“Who is that?” Richie asks, leaning against the doorway to Eddie’s office. Already it’s become less of an office and more of a studio, with a guitar, a keyboard, and some recording equipment already set up. It’s a strange contrast to Eddie, sitting at his desk, in a suit meant for an office job.

“Ben Thornewill,” says Eddie, glaring blearily at a spreadsheet and turning a yellow cell red. Richie winces. That’s the job interview spreadsheet, and Eddie has just had a bad one. Or he’s found out the company underpays its employees. “I should just quit going to job interviews,” he grumbles, kneading his temples.

“Eh, you’ll find the one for you,” says Richie, ambling inside to lean over Eddie’s shoulder. “I bet somewhere out there, there’s an insurance company or a brand-new start-up that _needs_ you, in all your overqualified, type-A glory. They just don’t know it yet.” He presses a kiss to Eddie’s cheek, and smiles when he sees a corner of Eddie’s mouth tug upward. “In the meantime, we should order Chinese.”

“Really got your ass kicked today, huh,” Eddie comments, saving his work and shutting off the computer. The song cuts off mid-sentence: _like songbirds in the—_

“Oh, yeah, definitely,” says Richie, leading Eddie out of the office and down towards the kitchen, to make some sweet tea. “Melissa Fumero can really pack a punch.”

The next day, he wakes up to the sound of John Lennon crooning _take a sad song and make it better._ When he pokes his head into Eddie’s studio, Eddie’s strumming absently along, singing to himself.

“You should listen to Marvin Gaye,” says Richie.

“He’s queued up,” says Eddie, pausing the song to re-tune his guitar. “Rich? Be honest with me. Should I stop going to job interviews?”

Richie runs a hand through his hair, trying to smooth down the rat’s nest it turns into whenever he has to drag himself out of bed before 10 AM. He can’t say he likes the jobs Eddie keeps applying for, positions like _senior analyst_ or _financial reports manager_ or _fraud and risk analyst_ , but he doesn’t want to get in Eddie’s way and stop him from going after what he wants. And if he wants to stay in the financial sector, then Richie will be behind him all the way.

But he’d asked for honesty, so Richie sighs, and says, “I think it’d help if you looked at other fields, honestly, besides Wall Street, LA extension. Right now you’re looking in an area that’s about the size of a virgin’s asshole pre-fingering—”

“Oh, you mean _your_ asshole?” Eddie huffs.

“You like my tight little asshole,” Richie says, earning an eyeroll from Eddie. He doesn’t take it personally, he knows just how much Eddie likes his ass. “But yeah, you gotta open it up a little more. Really stretch out that area.” He demonstrates, making a hole with one hand that he sticks two fingers into. “ _Really_ loosen up the, ah, standards you have.”

“What if I just,” Eddie starts, then stops. He looks down at his guitar, then turns the knob and says, “What if I do something that’s not in the business sector?”

Richie blinks at him. “Really?”

Eddie huffs out a breath, and says, “It’s—I don’t know, I’ve just been thinking, every time I go to a company I keep finding something _wrong_ with it and then I end up sabotaging my own fuckin’ interview so they don’t hire me. If it’s not the schedule it’s the culture and if it’s not the culture it’s the salary. I keep finding something wrong.” A nail rests against a guitar string. “But financial analysis is safe,” he says, softly. “I can’t just ditch it.”

“You kind of can, actually,” says Richie, coming over to sit down next to him. “I’m filthy rich now, remember? I could be your—”

“Oh, god,” Eddie groans.

“— _sugar daddy_ ,” Richie completes, waggling his eyebrows at Eddie. “Keep you in the lifestyle you’re accustomed to with my comedy money.”

“Please never call yourself a daddy again,” Eddie all but begs.

“Duly noted,” says Richie, “I think a tiny part of my soul just shriveled up when I said it.”

“Seriously, though,” says Eddie. “I don’t want to just—stay in a little office forever and pretend like I give a shit about my coworkers and their projects. You know the boss at my old job back in New York was getting high half the time?” He huffs out a slightly hysterical laugh. “I want to get out of the office, I want to do something _real_ , but that’s too risky, isn’t it? I don’t want to leech off your money either.”

“Eddie, I have more money than I know what to do with,” says Richie. “If I don’t spend it on you I’ll spend it on an Iron Throne replica.”

Eddie pauses. “As a financial analyst, I’d say that’s a really unwise purchase,” he says, slowly. “But also if you don’t do it then what the fuck are you even doing with all that money?”

“I love you so fucking much,” says Richie, gleeful. “But seriously: if you want to cut all ties with Wall Street and go start a basket-weaving business, I’ll be right behind you the whole way. Same thing if you want to stay in business but do something else.” He pauses. “So what do you _want_ , Eds? What makes your heart go all aflutter like a Victorian maiden’s?”

Eddie gives his guitar a testing strum. “Don’t call me Eds,” he huffs, but there’s no real heat behind it, hasn’t been in years. “You know something? Before I went into business I always sort of liked the idea of being a mechanic or an IT guy, fixing up my own shit.” He smiles a little down at his guitar. “Whenever our equipment or our car broke I was always the one fixing it,” he says. “Ilse used to say I had magic hands when it came to our shit, but really it’s just that I read the manuals and I had a better idea of what I was doing than anyone else.”

Richie’s hindbrain briefly gets stuck on the image of Eddie, sticky with sweat and grease, sliding out from under a car with a spot of oil on his cheek. Richie pushes that image aside, and says, “I didn’t know that. You wanna do something like that?”

Eddie shrugs. “Maybe,” he says. “It’s just an idea, at any rate.”

“You should try it out,” says Richie. “No shortage of auto shops and garages around here.”

“I’d need to get certified first, get a few more years of experience with repairing cars,” says Eddie, but there’s a gleam in his eye that Richie likes. “And that’s if I’m going to be repairing cars and not computers or shit. _Those_ I might have to go back to school for.” He taps his fingers against the neck of his guitar, and says, “I’ve got some research to do. And songs to write too.” He shoos Richie out of the room, and Richie goes after kissing the corner of Eddie’s mouth, then his cheek, then his temple.

The day after, Richie’s passing by the office when he hears Eddie singing, in a low, sultry voice, _Hey, mister, you going anywhere tonight? Got any more room in your cherry-red ride? ‘Cause if I stay this town will eat me alive, hey mister you should take me with you tonight._

\--

Eddie has a Twitter, but all he does on it is retweet Richie’s most embarrassing tweets, some of Bill’s book tour announcements, and every article on Marsh Fashion’s meteoric rise. There are a couple of people following Eddie because of his name having been associated with Gazebo Effect once upon a time, but Richie rests assured in the fact that there are only three people in Eddie’s admittedly tiny follower list (fourteen people, six of which are the Losers while the rest are people who follow every single one of their followers) who know anything about Gazebo Effect.

Okay, so he’s a hipster about Eddie’s old band, so fucking sue him.

Anyway, Richie doesn’t really think much of Eddie’s Twitter until he gets a notification in the middle of a writers’ room meeting for an episode of this new superhero show called _Damage Control_. He very discreetly tugs his phone out of his pocket and looks down to check Twitter.

Oh.

Oh, shit, Eddie’s released his first single _today_. Like, as of five minutes ago.

The responsible thing to do, Richie knows, is to put his phone back in his pocket and wait until the meeting is done so he can listen in peace to Eddie’s first real song in years.

Instead, because Richie turns into a five-year-old who hasn’t quite gotten the concept of delayed gratification when his boyfriend’s music is involved, he says, “Hey, uh, so the taco maybe was a little too much after all, I gotta go,” and scurries out of the meeting as fast as his feet can take him. Then he sprints to the bathroom, slams a stall door shut, and frantically plugs in his earbuds, cursing because god _damn_ are audio jacks tiny. He presses the download button, rushing through the process of buying the damn song, and in no time the slow, soft sound of a piano starts up in his ears.

 _Look at you standing there,_ Eddie sings, his voice soft and sure and full of wonder, _like a dream I’ve just now remembered. Silhouette in the spotlight, do you dream about me out of the light?_

He’s listened to this before, Eddie’d asked him to listen to a few of the songs before he started really polishing them. It still hits like a sack of bricks to the head—Eddie wrote a song about him. Eddie wrote a song, no, wrote _songs_ about him, _for_ him. This is one of them, a slow ballad with only piano and guitar backing up Eddie’s voice.

_Look at me, look at you, look at how we grew. I’m sorry I couldn’t find you, I missed you while we grew. Welcome back, sweetheart: how are you?_

Richie rests his back against the stall door, closing his eyes. He’s back in his college dorm room, looking up at the ceiling, listening to Eddie singing about running towards something, about finding his way home. He’s unpacking his suitcase in his new apartment while Gazebo Effect’s EP is playing and staring down at a broken little Spider-Man toy, wondering why his eyes are watering, why his heart has broken in half. He’s watching Eddie from across the room with his heart in his throat and his hands seeking out Eddie’s skin. He’s holding Eddie’s hand in the hospital whispering _I love you, I love you, I heard you, I love you so much,_ believing as hard as he can that Eddie’s going to wake up at any moment, that Eddie is going to be _just fine_.

If he clutches his phone any tighter he’s probably gonna break it.

_My love in the limelight, the spotlight fades in bitter time, but I, I loved you before we grew, I loved you before I ever knew. Look at me, look at you, look at how we grew..._

He cannot go back to the writers’ room like this, Richie realizes dimly, ten seconds after Eddie’s song ends, the piano’s melody ending in a final, soft note. He’s fucking _crying_ , they’ll wonder what’s up with him, and what’s Richie going to say? _Oh, it’s okay, I just had a near-religious experience listening to my boyfriend’s newest song in the bathroom_ is not an excuse that’s going to keep the tattered remnants of Richie’s dignity intact.

He emerges from the bathroom stall and blinks at one of the writers, who’s clearly just wrapping up his business. The guy looks at him, at the phone in his hand and his puffy eyes, and says, “So, uh, trouble in paradise?”

“Yeah, my boyfriend’s mom just broke it off with me,” says Richie, giving an exaggerated sniffle.

The guy rolls his eyes, zips up, gives his hands a brief wash, and then walks out of the room. Good riddance. Richie stuffs his phone into his pocket, then turns on the faucet, scrubbing a wet hand over his face so no one realizes he spent three minutes weeping in the bathroom like a teenaged girl after her break-up. In the back of his mind, the song still plays: _look at me, look at you. I loved you before we grew, I loved you before I ever knew._


End file.
